¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Just to clear something up, the judge is a 78 year old white male Reagan appointee. He's being a piece of **** because he is a deplorable just like 90%+ rich old white guys. For the love of god stop going full NPR with the "#actually" bull****.

I thought it sounded crazy that the defense didn't present a case, but this thread makes it sound quite normal.

Yeah it’s not that unheard of. I’ve had defense attorneys do it in cases I tried. Small sample size of it working but it worked on my second trial I ever did. It was a domestic violence between lesbians where the victim didn’t even show up to prosecute it. But my supervisor made me take it to trial because the cop witnessed a “shove” and the girl confessed to the cop that she hit her girlfriend and that her girlfriend never hit her.

They NG’d her in like an hour. Ftr i was looking for like 3 months probation on a plea agreement that would be expunged from her record. Lol.

lol this ****in guy

So closing arguments start tomorrow around 9:30am and the judge has asked both sides to max it out at about two hours? So the jury should be sent to deliberate around 12p-1:30p somewhere, probably go to lunch right away and resume around 1p-2:30p? So what are the chances these deliberations are only 2-3 hours and we have a verdict tomorrow?

Also IANAL but I'm guessing the defense will have robust closing arguments since they didn't call any witnesses? They may feel better arguing their case in closing arguments?

It’s neither good nor bad. It’s pretty standard. Manafort wouldh have gotten destroyed on the stand, so no reason to call him, and who else are they going to call in a paper case like this? Their objective is to try to confuse the jury into a not guilty verdict, there’s not much they can do as far as submitting additional evidence to do this.

It never goes that fast/smoothly and the jury instructions on the number of charges are going ot take a while. I doubt the jury has it for very long tommorrow, and very low chance of a verdict on a complicated case like this with so many charges.

I think it would be suicidal to put someone like Manafort on the stand. The bigger a piece of **** the defendant is, the easier it is for the prosecution. Just simple questions like "Have you ever told a lie, sir?", when there is likely piles and piles of documentation of his lies, put the defendant in a bind. Whether he says "sometimes" or "never", his credibility is shot. For a sleaze like Manafort the prosecution can hammer him on that stuff.

I think the general idea is that you don't testify as the defendant unless a)you're a saint so they can't use "gotcha" questions on cross or b) the trial has been a disaster and your only shot is a long shot direct appeal to the jury.

So Manafort was partners with Roger Stone at the deplorable lobbying firm Black, Manafort, and Stone back in the gogo 80s.

After Mueller indicts Stone, I hope he just kinda hangs out around Black's work* for a little while, maybe chatting up the secretary, leaving a message that Black can probably expect to hear from him, eventually.

*Charles R. Black Jr. (born 1947), is the current Chairman of Prime Policy Group, a public affairs firm which is a subsidiary of Burson-Marsteller Global Public Relations.

https://twitter.com/kenvogel/status/1029359743188516865

https://twitter.com/plantagious/stat...60856642019335

I would seriously consider buying one of those shirts if there were a link and I could be assured that none of the funds would go to PM or his cronies.

FREE PAUL MANAFORT

There is no chance you put someone with an enormous archive of statements to the media on the stand, the risk of opening the door to all sorts of lies and contradictions is just way too high.

what's the word guise?

As predicted, closings and instructions and miscellaneous other stuff took all day, the jury starts deliberating tommorrow. We will have a much better idea of what's going on at that point based upon their questions. In my experience, in a case like this, the quicker the verdict the better it is for the prosecution. The longer it takes, the worse it gets.

Should we expect it to take longer because there are so many counts to be considered? What's the point where enough time has passed for a case like this that you'd be pretty worried as the prosecutor? (Obviously we don't know all of the specifics and all, so just like a ballpark guess here at how long before we should start freaking out...)

That's what they said about the OJ Simpson trial.

General rule of thumb I’ve found is one day of deliberations per week of trial with huge variance. There’s a lot of “reading tea leaves” aspect to this though. I’ve had quick not guilties and I’ve had looong deliberations for a guilty. I’d say that if deliberations are still going on into the middle of next week that is not great. There are a lot of complicated counts, you’re right about that, so that could also gum it up.

Yeah, it’s a rule of thumb with a lot of variation. OJ Simpson trail was an outlier though because the trial was so ridiculously long because Lol California, so the jury was fed up by the end of it.

So a verdict by the end of the week is a good O/U line?

Jury is taking forever. Feels bad man.

Just takes one deplorable

Me, My shelf company and !

https://twitter.com/tom_winter/statu...02285681508352